Have You Seen My Potty?

Yes, yes, I know. Bear with me.

Despite the gross subject matter, Have You Seen My Potty? is a really great book. I was skeptical at first. But this story is actually humorous, and kids of potty-training age will be riveted, just as they are with all things poop. Best of all, no actual poop appears in this book!

"This is the story of Suzy Sue," the book announces on page one, "who had something very important to do." Suzy Sue appears in the illustration, smiling and proudly holding up her bright red potty chair. Unfortunately, just as she's sitting down to use it, a cow grabs it out from under her and she lands smack on her bottom on the ground.

"What a terrible thing. What an awful to-do. Who would play such a trick on poor Suzy Sue?" A good question, indeed. Why would "a rascal quite ruthless and rotten . . . steal someone's potty from under their bottom!" (At this point, Charlie always interjects, "Suzy Sue fall down! Oh no! Why she fall down?")

Meanwhile, on the other side of the barnyard, the cow, sheep, goat, horse, and several chickens are gathered around to examine the "poo pot" the cow has found just "lying around on the ground." The animals all line up to give it a try while Suzy Sue, stuffed rabbit in tow, searches the farm for her potty.

In a series of clever twists, Suzy Sue asks each of the animals if they've seen her potty, while that animal is actually using the potty. But the potty is hidden from her view each time--by a newspaper, a clump of grass, a scarf being knitted, or just around the corner. A failure of communication arises because Suzy Sue calls the object a potty while the animals are calling it a poo-pot. As the horse puts it, "Of course he'd not seen her potty. He knew this because he had no idea what a potty was!"

Suzy Sue eventually gives up, and since she really really really has to go, she decides to do it au naturale behind a plant. (This, by the way, is the most hilarious thing ever to a two-year-old. "No, Suzy Sue! We not poop in the grass!") Fortunately, the animals realize what she's about to do and provide the poo-pot for her use at the last minute. Whew! So, "That was the story of Suzy Sue, who had something very important to do."

The text is almost laugh-out-loud funny for grown-ups, and the illustrations are great, too. I love all the ways the potty is hidden from Suzy Sue's view, and also the numerous hold-it-in poses of the animals waiting in line for their turn.

My only real complaint with this book is that the story is hard to follow at Charlie's age. It depends on understanding that the animals (and the reader) can see something that Suzie Sue can't, which I believe is a concept developed more around the age of three and a half or four. The text goes back and forth from Suzy Sue's perspective to the animals' perspective, and I'm certain that Charlie isn't following it entirely. This doesn't seem to bother him in the least, however, since he asks for it every time we go to the bathroom and can nearly recite the entire text from memory. It's a huge hit in our household, and I definitely like that it stresses the importance of getting to the bathroom and not just the how-to aspect of using the potty like most other potty training books cover. Highly recommended!